Fourteen-year-old Adunni life in a Nigerian village together with her layabout, alcoholic daddy and two brothers. The novel starts regarding the early morning her father notifies her this woman is to be the taxi that is local 3rd wife so that you can offer the family members. Adunni’s is really a world that is poverty-stricken girls kneel with their fathers and address them as “Sah” without searching them when you look at the attention, where a paternal summons portends absolutely absolutely absolutely nothing but heartache.

That evening Adunni “didn’t in a position to rest through the night with the sorrowing and memorying” about her mom, Idowu, who “was spending money on college charges and lease moneys and money that is feeding every thing cash before she had been dead. ” Idowu has also been usually the one who instructed Adunni to pursue education no matter what: “Your schooling is the sound, kid. It’s going to be talking if you didn’t open the mouth area to talk. For you even” The feisty, smart-talking Adunni’s determination that is resulting remain in college and be a instructor sets her on a collision program along with the rest of her town, where girls’ life are defined by wedding.

The subjugation and intimate objectification of girls and women can be recurrent, ably managed themes through the novel. Adunni is warned against becoming like Tola, an informed, self-supporting banker who the villagers assume can’t locate a spouse “maybe because this woman is searching like a agama lizard with long locks or possibly because she actually is having money like a person. ” As her closest friend excitedly does Adunni’s makeup for the wedding, Adunni can’t also begin to see the mirror through her tears. Though even her beloved brother that is little Adunni can be best off married than residing at home, this woman is anything but welcome in her own brand new family, her elder co-wife declaring her a “husband snatcher. ”

Into the 2nd ominous call from a guy to change Adunni’s life forever, her brand brand new spouse, Morufu, summons her to his space — which seems to her “like a burial coffin” — to fall a sleep with him. Although Adunni fights all her might, Morufu to his advances overpowers her: “You are now actually complete girl. ” He vows to repeat their assaults until she bears a son.

Through Adunni’s piercing rhetoric — on her behalf tragic big day, she imagines that “the image of education that we placed on top a dining table within my heart ended up being dropping towards the flooring https://www.brightbrides.net/review/kenyancupid/ and scattering into little, small pieces” — Dare draws your reader in by having a vivid character whoever serious circumstances are contrasted along with her normal imagination (she keeps her spirits up by creating comic tracks imagining the perfect future), along with her undying will to endure. Realizing childbirth will seal her fate as a spouse, Adunni obtains contraceptive herbs through the co-wife that is second Khadija, their relationship providing a uncommon glimpse of women, or even exactly feminist, utopia.

After that the plot takes our protagonist for a whirlwind trip of this different horrors

— pregnancy-related death, an inhuman unlawful justice system, youngster intercourse trafficking, grueling work and physical violence both physical and mental — that an incredible number of Nigerian girls face, as well as for which, Dare indicates, training may be the escape that is only. Adunni nurtures her fantasy to become a teacher by sneaking into an employer’s collection to learn, and enlists a sympathetic neighbor to mentor her for the scholarship application.

Throughout her harrowing journey that is coming-of-age told with verve and compassion, Adunni never ever loses the “louding sound” which makes Dare’s tale, and her protagonist, therefore memorable.